After Action Report: Star Wars
After Action Report: Star Wars
Greetings WingNuts,
It shouldn't be a surprise that we had a blast with Star Wars! The movie holds up exactly as well as we hoped it would… the worst anyone could say was that the first act was a little slower than we remembered, and that's nothing now that we've seen The Dam Busters! Our overall review was that the original Star Wars deserves its reputation for both inspiring later movies and… video games.
It would be impossible to catalog every single thing in the Wing Commander canon that was influenced by Star Wars; the series itself is at its heart an attempt to create an interactive Star Wars experience! But we have collected some fun connections from the screening to list out here… be sure to share your favorites on the forums to add to the legend!
To start, here are some of the items we mentioned in the initial article. In the Dam Busters analysis we compared Wing Commander III's trench run with the source for the one from Star Wars… but watching Star Wars again it's clear that no one has done it better.
And then there's Luke! There isn't much to say here: Wing Commander III didn't set out to cast Hamill specifically but he really did make the game.
In the initial update we talked about Wing Commander IV borrowing Luke's house for the Nephele starport. Here's the comparison:
But Star Wars goes beyond all that; Wing Commander's very perspective comes directly from the forward-looking X-wing shots that tempted Chris Roberts as a teen:
When Wing Commander II needed a spectacular new feature (on a budget) they looked right back at Star Wars and added turrets pulled straight from the Death Star escape sequence! The Wing Commander movie also had a turret scene with Blair manning the Diligent's "ion cannon"!
What's Wing Commander's closest equivalent to the X-wing? Chris Roberts always made a point of asking artists not to reference Star Wars so directly. In terms of role, it's probably the Rapier (Wing Commander I's hero fighter)... but of course the Rapier's design was borrowed not from Star Wars but Firefox! Visually, the Ferret in Wing Commander II is probably closest… but it's pretty distinct and likely owes as much to the Colonial Viper as it does the X-wing.
The Kilrathi targeting computers used on Wing Commander Academy come from, you guessed it, Star Wars. It's the same one Luke had to turn off to trust in the Force!
The trench run isn't the only thing Wing Commander III borrowed, though - Admiral Tolwyn's Behemoth is certainly meant to suggest the evil Death Star!
When the Falcon comes out of hyperspace at what they expect to be Alderaan, it finds an asteroid field. Between this initial attempt and the more impressive followup in The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars absolutely introduced WIng Commander's unscientific 'giant field of little rocks'...
Dr. Forstchen is surely channeling Obi-Wan's cantina heroics when he gives us Commander Turner stopping an assassination in a Landreich bar in Action Stations… though his is dripping in classic Baen goofy libertarian ooze:
Geoff fell in behind him, noticing that he was walking slower than usual. Just as they reached the door, Winston turned with a quick, almost catlike movement, drawing a small blaster from his pocket. The report from the gun was muffled, the round impacting the chest of one of the patrons. The man sagged up against the bar and then slowly collapsed, a blaster dropping from his hand. Tolwyn looked at Turner and back to the dead man with wide-eyed surprise. It wasn't just the killing, it was the smooth, graceful ease Turner had displayed, as if he had been training for years for just such a moment.
Turner, his gaze fixed on the other patrons stood silent, weapon pointed straight up at the ceiling.
"Anyone else from the Sarns?"
Everyone was silent.
"Keeper, do you see the weapon in the man's hand?"
The owner of the bar slowly leaned over the counter-top to look at the body and then back at Turner. "I see it."
"And you saw him drawing it?"
The barkeeper nodded.
"Two other witnesses?"
"We seen it," a couple who had been standing next to the dead man announced.
"Then according to the laws of the Landreich the issue is settled," Turner replied, The other patrons nodded in agreement.
Privateer takes a feature right from Star Wars, too - the repair droid!
... and would Wing Commander I's medal ceremony look anything like this without Star Wars' quick finale?
One for the costume file: the brilliant orange Rebel pilot uniforms greatly informed the flight suits seen on Wing Commander Academy, which add an orange vest and strapped panel on top of the Wing Commander III suits!
The Tiger's Claw's cavernous walkway corridors in Wing Commander Academy surely owe more than a little to the Death Star's questionable deck layout…
Another Star Wars-introduced trope: the final dogfight with the bad guy's unique fighter plane, escorted by more familiar ships. Wing Commander did it in both Wing Commander II and III with Thrakhath's Bloodfang!
Wing Commander wasn't the first Origin game to borrow from Star Wars, though. The original Ultima had a space combat sequence where you battled TIE fighters way back in 1981!
Wing Commander and Star Wars share some significant connections behind the scenes, too. To make Wing Commander a Star Wars-like experience, Chris Roberts tapped into many of the same filmmaking techniques as George Lucas. And one of those was rotoscoping! Rotoscoping is a special effect where artists hand paint elements over film cels to create (hopefully) seamless animation. Star Wars uses this, for example, to animate the light sabers. Wing Commander I rotoscoped footage of runners on a treadmill into the Tiger's Claw's takeoff scene… and a GI Joe became the ejected pilot element! Wing Commander II featured several distinct rotoscoped animation scenes that were filmed with live actors.
Finally, George Lucas and Chris Roberts share a similar magic for 'getting it in the edit'. Star Wars famously came together after principal photography after sections of the film were jettisoned and others, like the trench run, were brought to life entirely in post. Chris Roberts famously attempted this in the Wing Commander movie and the results are debatable, but it is a skill he's carried with him through all his games. Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, after all, managed to wow despite the fact that the entire explanation for the game's title was removed after the fact!
Sully would like to bullseye some womp-rats.
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